Trivia / El Chavo del ocho

Edit Locked

Acting for Two: Chespirito in the Crossover; Carlos Villagrán in a flashback with Quico's father and baby Quico; María Antonieta De Las Nieves as both La Chilindrina and her "Bizcabuela"; Edgar Vivar as Sr. Barriga and Ñoño (sometimes even Talking to Himself); Florinda Meza as Doña Florinda and look-alike niece La Popis.

Creative Differences: The main reason for Carlos Villagrán and Ramon Valdez left the show. The former for disagreements with Bolănos and the latter for two reasons: to support Villagrán's decision and to show his discontentment with Florinda Mesa interference in the show.

The Danza: Chespirito liked to do this, because he felt the actors would be more connected to their characters this way. Same went for many of them when they played extras in El Chapulín Colorado, which used the same cast.

"...Florinda Meza as Doña Florinda; Ramón Valdés as Don Ramón..."

In later episodes, Maria Antonieta de las Nieves (La Chilindrina) as Doña Nieves.

Exiled from Continuity: Maria Antonieta de las Nieves has the rights of La Chilindrina and an unresolved legal dispute between Chespirito and her over the rights of the character forced the writers to adapt her out despite being a fan-favorite.

Fake Nationality: In the animated series, Prof. Jirafales is voiced by Juan Carlos Tinoco, who is Colombian, albeit his accent is not notable at any means since he speaks in a neutral accent in all moments.

Franchise Zombie: After the departure of Quico and Don Ramón the show substantially dropped in quality, but it still went on for approximately fourteen more years. The reason for this was that back in the 80's, the channel where the program aired enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the Mexican TV airwaves, making it possible to air whatever it wanted without risking much ratings.

Hostility on the Set: Bolănos and Villagrán started to have divergences in the latter seasons. In Bolănos' point of view, Villagrán tried to "steal the show" exaggerating his performances to get more attention from the public. In other hand, in Villagrán's point of view, Bolănos was getting "envious" about his character being one of the most popular. As result of this conflict, Villagrán left after the 1978 season.

Missing Episode: Some episodes are missing worldwide, especially from 1973 season. And depending on what country you're in, many episodes can be missing from syndication. In Brazil, some episode from older seasons which weren't lost had just one or two runs in the 80s and in the beginning of the 90s, without any rerun. Many years after, thanks for Internet, many fans discovered it. As result, they started to pressure SBT to air the "missing episodes".note This was a term used by Brazilian fans to refer to theses episodes The channel responded saying most of these episodes are very dated and with some errors but since 2012 the channel started to air these "missing episodes" from the older seasons.

Despite the success of El Chavo, the series had its detractors, mainly for their slapstick scenes that some considered as "violent" and harmful to children.

Ecuador takes this trope Up to Eleven. Ironically, Ecuador being the first country where the program was successful outside of Mexico, is the same country where the strongest criticism appears. Some of the comments against the program come from Ecuador and studies on the incidence of violence on TV (where they include El Chavo as an example) are from Ecuador.

Angelines Fernández as Doña Clotilde is the only actress that averts (and even barely inverts) this trope. Doña Clotilde claims to not be more than 45 years old, while Angelines was 5 years older than that by the time she first appeared in the series.

Doña Florinda was often mocked by the children due to her age. Florinda Meza was 22 years old when the series started.

Two cases were more extreme than Florinda's: Janet Arceo María Antonieta de las Nieves portrayed characters (Doña Eduviges and Doña Nieves, respectively) that are supposed to be noticeably older than Doña Florinda, but are even younger than Florinda Meza.

Reality Subtext: The last batch of Chavo episodes were classroom sketches. This was in 1992, at which point Chespirito was over sixty, and not as able to do his slapstick routines as he once was. The classroom scenes could be done with everyone sitting at desks.

Recycled Script: Some scripts were done as much as four times. Sometimes, with the very same characters in the very same roles.

Screwed by the Network: Despite airing El Chavo since 1984 in Brazil, the relationship of Brazilian TV network SBT with the fans and with the voice actors isn't nice. During the 2000s, the network started to frequently change the time slot of the show (with Saturday 6am as the worst example), replacing it with Mexican soap operas and other stuff in order to increase the audience (which increased the rumors about SBT putting an end to El Chavo). This still happening during the The New '10s, but less frequently, since the network failed to find a good substitute to the show and still fears a boycott from the fans. Also, SBT had some troubles with former voice actors due to financial disputes. As a result, two voice actors refused to dub the characters again (ironically, the voice actors of Quico and Don Ramón).

Talking to Himself: In the later seasons, (after the departure of Ramón and Quico) most of the cast actually played two characters. And they were needed to interact each other using split image. In the Crossover with El Chapulín Colorado, even the titular character needed to do it.

Throw It In!: Many bloopers made it to the final edit. Sometimes this was because they were funny or the cast used them to their advantage, or because of schedule deadlines rather than for being funny since Chespirito was known to dislike improvisation.

In one episode, after a typical confrontation with Doña Florinda, Don Ramón angrily throws his hat, and it accidentally goes through Doña Florinda's door just as it closes. Don Ramón continues his snit fit but briefly pauses to knock on the door until one of the other actors lets him in to retrieve it. (See it here.) No one breaks character, which makes the scene funnier than if it had gone as planned.

Other times, production problems that should have caused a stopdown didn't. There is one early show where a loud thunderstorm is obviously going on outside the studio, and yet no one mentions the frequent thunderclaps that can be heard over the dialogue.

In one of the versions of "Que Bonita Vecindad", Ramon Valdez clearly messes up a dance move, but it was left in the final version.

Too Soon: The Internet's reaction after Ecuadoran congresswoman Rosana Alvarado's tweeted negatively about Chespirito on the day he passed away.

You Look Familiar: Godínez was technically a recurring character, but still unimportant enough that actor Horacio Gómeznote That's Horacio Gómez Bolaños, the younger brother of Roberto Gómez Bolaños, AKA Chespirito appeared as other characters once or twice, such as in the Acapulco special where he appeared as a waiter in the hotel the cast was staying, as Godinez hadn't gone on vacation with them. In one case, Horacio Gómez even appeared as both Godinez and a restaurant manager in the same episode, with no mention of them being related.

Also, famous soccer player Pelé once phoned in Chespirito to ask him to make a movie of the show and even offered himself to appear in it, but Chespirito declined as he didn't support the idea of having movies of shows you can see for free on TV.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy